


Hallelujah, You're Home

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Prompt Fills [26]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 21:56:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14090523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: He's only just got Clara back, and already it's time to say goodbye.





	Hallelujah, You're Home

**Author's Note:**

> From ThePurpleFrockCoat's prompt:
> 
> _The Doctor goes to Clara's grave to say goodbye before regenerating. He finds Lady Me there and they have a heart to heart talk and get proper closure with each other._

“I didn’t expect to find you here.”

The girl’s voice was softer than he had ever heard it before, but it still caused him to shudder reflexively at the memory of what she had done. No matter what she claimed to be, no matter how tough she claimed the world to have made her, she would always be a girl to him - the scared, terrified girl he had thought he was saving, but had cursed to eternal damnation instead. She stepped into his field of vision and he was surprised to find her dressed far more like the teenager he had rendered her to be for eternity; dark jeans, dark leather jacket, a silver stud in her nose. She was no longer the girl playing dress-up that he had become accustomed to, no longer garbed in gowns that dwarfed her tiny frame or shoes that were intended to make her look taller. She looked, dare he think it, normal.

“I thought...” she began, but he shrugged. An almost imperceptible motion, but she knew him too well by now to miss it. “What happened?” 

“I was given a gift,” he said quietly, looking up at her from his cross-legged position on the damp autumn earth. “By a friend. One that involved fixing me. Which is ironic, really, given the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

He held up his hand, unclenching his fist to reveal the burning golden light dancing across his palm.

“I’m sorry,” she said at once, lowering her head. She knew enough of the Time Lords to know what it meant. “I didn’t...”

“I’m dying,” he said quietly. “How cruel can the universe be? I get her back, and then I die.”

“I’m sure the next-”

“The next Doctor will not be me,” he said sharply. “They will not be the same. Clara wouldn’t know them; she wouldn’t recognise them in a crowd. They wouldn’t mean the same thing to her, and Clara won’t mean the same thing to them. She’s the first face I saw and the last one I will recall, only now I’m doomed to die without her.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Me asked, crouching beside him and laying a bouquet of brightly-coloured lilies on the headstone in front of them. “Hoping to be with her when... when it happens?” 

“I was hoping so, yes,” the Doctor reached for the bunch of withered roses that obscured Clara’s name on the fresh, bright-white marble. As he lifted them into his hands, they glowed with a golden light, and he held the renewed blooms in his hands, letting the thick scent overwhelm him. If his voice was a little choked, he could always claim it was the pollen. “She loved bright things. Bright flowers. She’d... she’d like yours.” 

“She’d like the roses too,” Me smiled, her own eyes wet with unshed tears. “When I travelled with her, she’d always buy them. Red ones, to match your jacket. I... I brought her those ones,” she gestured at the arrangement he was holding. “The last time I was here.”

“Thank you,” the Doctor said sincerely. “Thank you for being with her, for all those years. Keeping her safe.” 

“She was the one keeping me safe, half the time,” Me chuckled, although there was a sadness in her eyes that he knew was mirrored in his own. “Reminding me I wasn’t quite as unbreakable as she was.” 

There was a long silence, of the comfortable variety, and then:

“I’m sorry,” Me said in a rush, the words spilling out of her. “For what I did.”

“I know.”

There was another silence, longer this time, and the Doctor could feel the energy spreading up his arms into his chest, tugging at the hearts that had only ever beat for Clara.

“I love her,” he confessed in a whisper, knowing what was about to happen and wanting to make his last words count. “In every tense, in every life, in every reality.”

“I know.”


End file.
